The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-03-20
SEANCE SECRETS REVEALED.
The Interesting Story Of One Who Was
Once Spiritualistic Enthusiast,
Resources of Mediums in Producing Material
lied Spooks-How Skeptics Exposed the
Cheat in Alleged Materializations.

Spir1toallSm!' repeated the gentleman AFTER
the reporter ''well, was interested in the sub
ject, and gave some time and some money to it,
but think am cured now; thoroughly cured.
My wife and myself became investigators, and
we attended every seance we heard Of. saw
what supposed were genuine materializations
and genuine slate writing, together with other
spirit phenomena. The first shock my faith
ceived came about in this way: female me-
dunn came here from the East. was entertained
around among the believers, and gave number
of cabinet performances. The cabinet used was
a wooden framework, with opening
in 1t little more than a foot square.
with curtains to draw apart or close
with a string. Faces appeared at this
opening in the dim light Of darkened room.
There were faces of Indian chiefs with feathers
and war paint, faces of grayhaired grandmoth
ers, oldmen faces with patriarchal
boards and white hair, faces of young
men With very black mustaches, and
of others with auburn side whiskers.
I confess took everything for what il appeared
to be, as persons in the audience frequently rec
ognized the faces of deceased friends, or said
they did, and one evening lady relative of my
wife, who had gone with US, swooned dead away
at recognizing the face, so she affirmed, of a
brother who WAS drowned at sea. VIVA. shook
me what happened weeE later, when
skeptical matron one evening bounced upon the
embonpoint of the medium as she emerged from
the cabinet, and pulled out enough hair and
whiskers to stock wig shop, together with a lot
of white cloth, Grape and other toggery of which
/ don't even know the names.
But number of good people, thorough be-
levers, dispelled my suspicious to the crook
edness of this medium and her manifestations
and my wife and myself continued dancing at
| tendance persons who claimed to be on init
mate relations with departed spirits. Ever at
tend seance2 Well. they are often opened by
singing hymn, and now and then o spirit will
| lead in prayer. Spirits always pray in very
| hoarse whisper, and one night at seance. de-
| tected cardamom seed the breath of the
| spirit l have used them myself on a spirit
breath, but prefer coffee or orange peel One
| medium, woman, occasionally patronized by
wife and myself would enter the cabinet and
| go into what she called a trance condition: then,
| low light, very low, and silence Faces would
| appear at the window of the cabinet, and some
| times ful-length figures would come out. no.
adornment-mustache, chin beard or side
faced. My wife put me A' on to o'H0 that
fact never saw a smooth-faced gen.
tleman phantom. One lady who desired to see
| very. dear departed male friend was much
| grieved when his face appeared in the cabinet
| with a mustache that would have done credit to
| the boss canvassman of three-ringed show.
|
| mustache in life, and some thought his demise
was occasloned by broken heart because the
numerous mustache-c ompeilerS wouldn't work
and produce, as the advertisement promised, a
luxuriant growth in from four to six weeks
tried to comfort the lady and dispel her rising
| skepticism by telling her that it might be that
| his shade IN the summerland was recompensed
| for what nature had denied him in this life.
| "At one of these cabinet shows the medium
a woman-and women make the best mediums
IN materializations. for, you see, an investigator
cannot carry his curiosity to the extent of being
rude in such case-tod me that her leading
spirit was a Methodist minister who, when alive,
had been member of the Southeast Indiana
| Conference. One of the patrons of this medium
| assisted me to find out something about this
minister who had gone to the land of shadows
| and now led a band of thirty light other spooks
| in this spiritualistic Punch and Judy show. She
said that, when f1eshly resident Of this mum
dane sphere, he lived in johnson county. We
investigated the story fully. There had never
hood in which the medium located him, and no
| such name had ever been connected with the
Southeast Indiana Conference.
There was another shade who used to come
and whistIe-an uncanny whistle that filed all
| who hea, 4 1t with unspeakable awe and
| dread. This whistling spook had two or three
| tunes, and the medium describing him said he
was very exemplary person who at one time
had lived here, but had passed to the spirit land
from New York She gave his name, where he
had been buried and other particulars. found
on investigation that the young man was a
| myth, even too thin myth to predicate phan-
tom upon. The medium rather oyerstepped her.
| self in giving particulars, she said he had at
one time been paying teller at the First National
| Bank, and soon found that no such person had
| ever been connected with the bank at ALL Fun
ny thing. by the way, about the whistle One
day lady caller, while Waiting at the door be-
fore ringing the bell, actually heard and saw the
! medium whlstiing of the Stygian tunes
The caller said nothing to the medium about it,
Init toll nf "a ri at9Da fn phoro f h
patrons.
Sometimes spirit in the band OF this medi-
UNI would materialiZe and speak German My
wife knows something about German and when
an attempt was made to pass off this spirit as
the mother of my wife, my respected spouse
Kicked mean she objected She told me it
was German of the easy method kind. Have
you the green parasol of the sister of the baker?
No. but have the yellow stockings of the lame
uncle of the rich shoemaker There was an
other spirit who sung French in a whisper and
I suppose the French was quite as bad as the
German Ny wife called my attention to the
fact that the boards and mustaches that ap-
peared at the cabinet window in these material
cations always had a bogus look about them and
never seemed to fit the face. 1 noticed myself
that this part of the make up wasn't we'll done
as it might be- and | am of the opinion that al
actor who couldn't wear hair or whiskers
any better than these spirits would
, be terribly guyed by the galleries
A lady friend of ours noticed that though The
medium always entered the cabinet with clear
face she usually emerged. after the materializa
tons were over, with dark streak under he
not unpretty nose and another streak on he
dimpled chin. This lady friend, in the innocenc,
, of her heart, wondered why this was ant
, | thought the spirits were in some way to blam,
for it. She asked the medium After that wher
the medium came out of the cabinet her fac,
was unsmirched. Perhaps she had demonstrated
with the spirits. Either that, or she had busted
the whiskers. Another curious thing: TIL,
medium always went into the cabinet with clip
pers on, and the slippers always came off he
feet. At the last seance attended we wer
, told to expect some extraordinary materaliza
tions. The room had the usual dim, uncertai,
light, and the eight or ten of US who formed tn.
developing circle clasped hands. a female fig
ure in white came out from the cabinet and pu